Program, The Mask
by malevolentrobot
Summary: "She was too, too young to have died as she did." An AU where Voldemort has won the war and Severus Snape blames himself for certain casualties.


title: program, the mask (they'll be bringing your salvation)  
rating: PG  
pairing: snape/hermione  
notes: AU where Voldemort has won and Severus Snape blames himself for certain casualties. any inconsistencies are mine alone... its been a while since i read the earlier books.

_faithless sinners dry your tears and your lamentations_  
_when the angels of the lord smile upon you_  
_they'll be bringing, they'll be bringing your salvation_

She was too, too young to have died as she did.

He pinches the bridge of his nose as he realizes that he cannot remember teaching classes at Hogwarts before her. That to him, somehow her memory had warped so that she had always been there. Insufferable, with her constant hand-waiving and rote knowledge of potions, her voice becoming detached as she rattled off the uses of various potions ingredients. How he scowled at her the first day in class, just like he scowled when he found that she had aligned herself with that glory-monger's son, Harry Potter. And just like he scowled when he found out she too had abased herself to fawning over that idiot Gilderoy Lockhart, because despite her brilliance she still was sadly not immune to his overt charms, just like every other unremarkable female in her year.

He remembers the look in her eyes the night Draco Malfoy hexed her into a buck-toothed nightmare and wonders why she cried when he finally noticed her teeth growing quite long at a very rapid rate. For he had always presumed up until that point she was a creature of intellect, not another preening schoolgirl. She had never struck him as a creature of vanity (and since when was he paying attention? Of course the Dark Lord told him to, but even he wouldn't care to be reported back to with such banal information), nor had he ever paid attention to her budding womanliness, hidden behind her obliviousness to such frivolities as fashion, despite her popularity. That is until that moment, the thoughts of which did not linger long in his mind until after the Rita Skeeter smear campaign against her.

No, this was not the Dark Lord's doing.

Marking her progression as a formidable witch (perhaps even more of a threat than the Dark Lord's own obsession, Harry Potter himself), this was something the keen mind of Severus Snape realised of his own volition.

* * *

_"Professor? A word please?"_

_He doesn't even have to look up to know who the voice belongs to, having heard it every day in class the last five years. Grimacing, pinching the bridge of his nose with inkstained thumb and forefinger, he finally pushes back his raven hair behind an ear and looks up to acknowledge her presence after a few uncomfortable moments pass, hoping they are to his advantage._

_"What on earth is so compelling that you need ask me now instead of in class, Miss Granger?" He asks, voice laced with boredom._

_"N-n-nothing, nevermind, sir." She had already faced down darker evils with such bravery, and yet he she was shifting her weight nervously in front of a simple Professor of Potions._

Pathetic.

_He scowls. "You're stammering, Granger. Surely you at least have whole sentences in that tumultuous mind of yours with which to annoy me rather than inane chatter. Not that I wish to indulge them currently." He sweeps his hand in an arc over his desk, notices how she follows it intently with her eyes, as if to make his silent point._

_"I was just going to ask you if you were going to go over Draught of Living Death for O.W.L.S., sir."_

_A malicious smirk plays itself on his lips once he realises her error. "If you had paid attention instead of trying to be a glorified know-it-all, you would have known that that potion is N.E.W.T.S. level and therefore not covered in the fifth-year syllabus."_

_"I-I am sorry, Professor, I could have sworn-" she begins, but cuts herself off as she looks at him, sincerity on the verge of tears brimming and threatening to spill from large, brown eyes. "My apologies for bothering you."_

_Knowing he has won once again, he goes back to shuffling the stack of essays he waived her off, before striking a rather vicious line through a completely useless paragraph on the one on top (he looks at the name and is unsurprised to see the no talented, waste of space given the now dolorous last name of Longbottom on it), not even looking up to see her face at his apparent dismissal until the dungeon's door creaks before making a satisfyingly loud thud closed._

_Reclining backwards in his chair, a wicked sneer crosses his lips as he replays the exchange again in his mind._

_

* * *

_He never saw the look on her face when she was sure she'd made the potion correctly, having made it once before, only to have her own friend, the dunderhead The-Boy-Who-Lived-To-Annoy-Them-All (Especially Severus Snape) make it better. A stinging blow to her self-esteem he would have loved to have seen at the time, no doubt.

So many chances to try and mend what he had done and get her to trust him, but he continued to be such an arsehole, even after she had defended him repeatedly.

_He was supposed to be there to protect her!_

He slams his hand down on the thick wooden desk, the vibrations sending ripples through his snifter of Firewhiskey, sloshing the contents down the sides. Wondering when his observations became paramount to an obsession of sorts with the swotty, little know-it-all who had pestered him for years. How one of his charges he abandoned had wormed its way into his very defenses and lingered long after the light of life had extinguished.

No one had done that since Lily Evans. Surely he was just beginning to be driven mad, finally chafing under the master's whip once there was no more Albus to have hope to save them all (and perhaps, yes, even himself).

He thinks of how she would look now, older, her chestnut hair longer (possibly falling down her back in gentle waves), how time would have supplied her with the lovely cruelty of gentle feminine curves, the likes of which many boys her age would be admiring under her Gryffindor uniform, rather than her sharp intellect. How she would have looked, bending over a hot cauldron, just like in his class, to visually check the contents for consistency (And what would she be brewing now? Where would her skill have taken her?)-

He licks his lips before throwing the thought out of his mind.

Another sip of a rather potent vintage of modified Firewhiskey stings as it burns its way down his throat, but it brings no tears to his eyes. Just like the memory of her among the fallen does no longer. Instead he thinks of a dove flying overhead only to fall down, an innocent among the casualties of a Great War and he wonders why she died at such an early age, a heroine, and he still continues to live this pathetic, half-life of his as a traitor.


End file.
